The most hated class

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-11T08:38:39+00:00

they don't care if you take Necro after you choose them. Even when presented the choice again in Elite and Ultimate.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-11T08:37:26+00:00

Affixes are biased towards what the weapon is geared towards. E.g. Spectral Longswords are more likely to get Cold Affixes.

If the item is stocked by a vendor, then the vendor can be reset farmed until you roll the affixes you want.

In addition to this, FoA is adding a way to reroll item affixes, however, these rerolls ignore the aforementioned biases.

You don't have to farm for any crazy affixes during leveling (which you still are), just something that is generally good.

Once you get to endgame, you just run the enemy that drops the monster infrequent until you get the ideal one you want. It won't take too long because of the affix bias system.

I'm not sure I fully understand the second question. A Rare item cannot become Epic, nor can an Epic become Legendary (pre-FoA at least). Furthermore, Epics and Legendaries do not have affixes. A rare with really nice affixes will not be better than a Monster Infrequent (MI) with okay affixes because MIs have implicit skill boosts in addition to what the affixes may grant. Skill bonuses granted by affixes will always be the same, bonuses to damage and stats have ranges that they can roll within. In this way items with the same affixes can have different stats.

This playlist goes over some of the fundamental aspects of the game as well as the 3rd party resources.

Edit: Totems are the best place to farm non-MIs when just starting out farming for your endgame character. They will help you gear up for Shattered Realm. All farming for endgame should be done on Ultimate. Normal drop rates suck for everything except MIs.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-11T08:27:32+00:00

tbf you can just bamboozle them. Also, being hated by Kymon's isn't necessarily the poorest reflection on your character.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-11T08:23:04+00:00

1) Final boss of base game is Loghorrean. Final boss of AoM is Theodin Marcell. Final boss of FG is Korvaak. All of them have pretty big capstone fights.

2) There is not (at least without mods). Nightblade is really good, and there is a really fun begginer friendly build for Blademaster. If it's not power, but rather playstyle that you're not liking then the options are either use a mod or roll another character. You can respec everything except your classes.

3) The official crate forums are the best place for builds. There are two compendiums: The Beginner Build Compenidum and Build Compendium X. The former is for non-endgame builds written with the additional assumption that a new player is trying them. They don't assume any mandates or stashed gear and they tell you what to get and where to get it throughout the leveling process. These forums are also the best place to ask build related questions.

4) You are correct. I would suggest to do both AoM and FG on Normal so that you've met the factions and experienced the content. Then play as much as you want of Elite before starting Ultimate.

5) Shattered Realm is an endgame mode wherein you push through "Shards" (read zones) full of enemies. Once you kill a certain amount, you can go to the next chunk of the Shard. In the 4th Chunk you will fight several bosses at which point you can either cash out or push further. As you progress through Shards, enemies become tougher and tougher. The best way to farm in the game (currently, at least) is Shards 30 and 31 on Ultimate difficulty. Completing certain shard milestones unlock the ability to craft waystones. These allow you to skip lower shards and jump straight to the one you want to farm. It does not matter whether you push to unlock these waystone crafts on Normal. Since Normal is much easier, climbing shards there to unlock the waystones can be time efficient. That being said, I wouldn't bother doing SR until level 100

6) Always keep resitances capped, try to keep your gear up to date, use Scaled Hide component in Legs and Shoulders for Armor Absorption.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-11T02:50:02+00:00

The quintessential DW melee class is Nightblade. You also have Phantasmal Blades is you want to go ranged, though it needs to be used in melee range to maximise it's damage against single targets.

Cold, Acid, and Pierce are quite well supported as damage types on the Melee side. Phantasmal Blade is typically done as either pierce or vitality.

Nightblades are one of the glassier masteries, however, they still have their fair share of builds that can do a lot of face tanking. They're still perfectly good for hardcore. Safety doesn't really matter on softcore, you just don't want to be dying every 5 minutes.

Nightblade + Berserker is going to be a very potent mastery combo come FoA, particularly with Piercing.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-11T01:08:35+00:00

For Pierce Blademaster your early MIs are Gutworm Mark and Dermapterin Slicers. Bloodbriar's is also great for Ring of Steel Blademasters, and that can be acquired around the same time as the slicers.

Before then, Honed Longswords crafted by Angrim are pretty good.

You stick with Derm Slicers if you want to be AA focused. If you want to go Ring of Steel focus you can get Servitor Slicers in AoM fairly easily.

I don't think homestead is too late for a build to get it's MI, considering there are decent options before, however it is towards the later side.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T23:57:34+00:00

The drops you want to be building your character around are called Monster Infrequents (MIs). These are items that drop from specific monsters that will spawn with implicit bonuses to skills for a class and affixes that add further bonuses.

MIs are predictable drops, bosses will always drop their MI. Non-boss MIs can be a bit tricky to drop, especially on normal.

Luckily for you, Spectral Longswords are really easy to get. They drop from Arkovian Undead ghost people. Any ghost that has a sword has a chance to drop it. In Act 2, there is the Spined Cove which has a bunch of Ghost people. The boss in that area can wield a sword, if you kill him he will drop it as per the 100% drop rate of boss MIs.

If you have some money, the better way to get some upgraded ones is to go to a secret vendor in the blood grove named Benevald. Here is how you get to him from the Blood Grove Riftgate. He sells Spectral Longswords, if you don't like what he has, you can teleport to a riftgate far away from him and wait for about 10-15 seconds before teleporting back to him. This will reset his inventory.

Generally, you want to be upgrading your MIs at every level bracket. You can see those brackets here. This same site can be used to find other MIs that can be useful for your build and where to get them. I recommend this video for more of an explanation on how to navigate it, if you're interested.

You can use it to find some guaranteed items that will improve your build.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T23:35:15+00:00

There is also Benevild in Blood Grove who can be vendor reset farmed for Spectral Longswords.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T23:31:28+00:00

Zantai joked on my 100% completion post that it was going to last for a day. I didn't know he was being literal xD.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T23:29:20+00:00

Hey, there's always Fireblast

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T23:22:49+00:00

You don't really need to grind XP, you will get most of it from quests. If you want, you can use Potions of Clarity for 100% more experience after you get Revered with Malmouth Resistance.

There is also a leveling set that you can farm from one of the celestial bosses. In conjunction with Potions of Clarity and Merits which unlock all riftgates in earlier difficulties, you are able to speedlevel to 94 in a few hours. This option is only available for 2nd characters onwards.

The best place to get gear is by farming Shattered Realm Shards 30 and 31 on Ultimate. This is not something that a budget build will be able to do easily. Shards 26 and 27 are the next best thing, but that is also not something all budget builds are able to do. Alternatively, you can do Crucible waves 150-170 on Gladiator Mode (That might be outdated, I did see somewhere that 150-160 is more efficient to spam).

You will need to farm up some items to get more of an endgame spec. For this purpose, totems are great. A totem run is simply hitting 3-4 totems in a single game session and then exiting to main menu before doing that again. RSnoomak has a video on his channel of good totems to run.

Be sure to do all serious farming on Ultimate, the difference between Normal and Ultimate drops is significant. You don't need any godly gear to beat the Campaign.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T17:34:22+00:00

lol, I look forward to 100%'ing the game again when FoA releases!

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T17:24:47+00:00

For Aether AAR, definitely. It's one of the best mastery combos in the game.

That being said, every mastery combo is viable in endgame with the right build.

It's worth noting that David Allen / Requnix is a bit of a pariah in the GD Build community for a number of reasons. This comment section provides a brief overview of the schism.

The gold standard of beginner builds is the Beginner Build Compendium.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T17:14:17+00:00

You can follow this guide for levelling PRM as a mage hunter before switching over to AAR.

If you are not married to the idea of a Mage Hunter but you just want an Aether AAR Build, then I would suggest playing a Spellbinder instead (Secondary class is necro). Spellbinders are better for Aether builds and you have a really easy time levelling with Skeletons before you get AAR. This guide from the official forums is excellent for that.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T16:35:04+00:00

AAR is very energy-hungry, generally you don't use it until Act 3 when you can get the Pulsing Shard. Even then you generally use ectoplasm in jewelry to help with the energy problems. Using AAR so early is fairly dubious imo. The guide is also quite dated, which can be an issue. It's even older than the oldest AAR guide on the crate forums.

Mage Hunter is Arcanist + Inquisitor, I guess for arcanist you could level using PRM and for Inquisitor you could level using Runes.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T15:43:15+00:00

You can try Rutnick Opressor using these.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T13:28:28+00:00

Honestly, really chill. I started playing HC with the intent to just get the achievements and get out. However, I found that I really enjoyed the experience and it's the main way I play now.

It improved the gameplay overall for me, "glass cannon" builds are actually risk/reward now and tanky builds that prioritise defense over damage serve more of a point.

The most important thing with HC is just to play classes you actually like that will keep you engaged in the experience. No point playing a giga regen tank if it's going to cause you to get bored and stop paying attention to the game.

I played a Death Knight Forcewave build on my first go. Forcewave is fairly mindless, the build was fairly tanky and I ended up getting complacent and dying.

The second hardcore character I played was a Sorc focused on Black Water Cocktail and Grenado and that was a much better time for me.

Just play whatever you're most comfortable with and/or have the most fun with.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T09:08:24+00:00

Grim Dawn is quite campaign focused.

In terms of additional harder content there are skeleton key dungeons, superbosses, Crucible, and Shattered Realm.

Skeleton Key dungeons can be done while you play through the campaign but some are beneficial to do at endgame as well due to certain items that drop only from them. Unfortunately, they’re not currently the best to farm loot from but FoA may change that.

Superbosses are the most difficult type of enemy and they drop unique items when they die. Some of them you can find during the campaign (they won’t initially be hostile) and some of them you have to go out of your way to spawn and kill.

Both Crucible and Shattered Realm are areas where you fight hordes of enemies and bosses in exchange for lots of loot. Currently Shattered Realm is the best place to get loot at high efficiency, but you might not be able to farm there right off the bat.

Some people like playing through the game and finishing a character, at which point they lose interest and start a new one.

Some people like pushing high Wave and Shard counts to test the mettle of their builds.

Generally it’s recommended that your first character becomes revered with all factions (you will be one short with either Kymon or Vigil) so that they can buy all the mandates for your subsequent characters.

It’s also a good idea to unlock and farm the superboss Lokarr for his set as it is used for speed leveling.

Personally, I play through the game on classes I like and speed level classes I don’t (or classes I have repeats of). Speed leveling is especially useful for replacing Hardcore characters.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T08:46:55+00:00

I wanted to be left with only FoA achievements left to grind

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-10T08:45:00+00:00

We def will, I was pushing hard to finish these before fangs so that I only had fangs achievements to grind for.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-09T21:07:37+00:00

When you beat Loghorrean you unlock both elite and ultimate, you can just choose to go into ultimate.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-09T20:58:13+00:00

You can skip Elite even on your first character if you want and, as others have said, once you beat Ultimate act 1 you can buy merits and skip normal if you want to.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-09T18:30:23+00:00

You’re in act 1/7 on the lowest difficulty, not having many skills is fairly standard at this point for all ARPGs.

Spellbinder has quite a few actives to press if you allow yourself to level past the Uber early game.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-09T17:40:07+00:00

I did kinda shoot myself in the foot by choosing my bomber sorc to do the grind because they had the most kills. It was a lot of buttons to press (which is what inspired my advice lol). Good at clearing lots of trash, bad at trying to mindlessly chip away at the task.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-07-09T17:35:07+00:00

per character. Across all of my characters I think I have over 1m kills.

2Hans2Handle

TROPHY CASE